


When Atlas Shrugs

by TheBarghestsNotebook



Series: A Man Called Atlas [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Other, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 20:18:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12490016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBarghestsNotebook/pseuds/TheBarghestsNotebook
Summary: The reader wakes up to find that Steve's not in their bed. Sometimes, you can only find peace when the world is asleep.





	When Atlas Shrugs

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another comfort fic for when I'm feeling tired and overwhelmed.

There is nothing better than stretching out across a king sized bed, feeling the cool sheets on your skin, being surrounded by blankets and pillows. But it is not so good when those sheets are supposed to be warm and you are supposed to be surrounded by more than just blankets and pillows. 2:27am. Bathroom dark. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled out of bed and across the room as my body tried to remember how to walk. Empty room, empty hallway. A flash of light accompanied soon after by thunder. It made my world seem so much…smaller. Scarier. My feet were muffled by the rain, but they still sounded so loud.

And then I saw him. Slouched, sitting on the armrest of the couch, form contoured by the city glow outside and the occasional flash of lightning. So still, he could have been mistaken for one of his many statues. He seemed so…soft. Small. Weak. The world that had rested on his shoulders had left such deep bruises. Sagging shoulders only when no one could see them. Eyes holding that thousand-yard stare because he just wants to see something that is no longer there. A man who was forced into a world not his own without even so much as a life vest.

“I hope the storm didn’t wake you,” he said to me, his gaze still fixed out the window.

“No." A long pause, a comfortable and tired silence. "Do you want to be left alone?”

“…I don’t know.”

We stayed like that, me in the hallway, him on the couch. The silence between us with the rain outside and the thunder in the sky.

“It’s rare, times like this,” he said. His voice was so tired. “Where things are just...peaceful. Where I can just sit here and think.”

“You never really get time to yourself, do you? Between saving the world and being…well, being you.”

“Yeah,” an exhausted laugh, a barely breathed chuckle, somewhere not quiet happy but borderline outside of sadness. “Even before this, all of this, I never had the time. I was always so busy. It’s nice to finally…” he sighed, his body sagging as he no longer tried to hold up the world. “To finally slow down.”

Leaning against the wall, I watched him. Not so much as an empty shell, not so much as the ghost of a man, but a vessel of an ideal that was taken too far. Run into the ground and picked back up again. Fighting for everything but himself with motivation that goes beyond healthy. A battery charged on loyalty, fueling his desire for good. And with every recharge, the battery life gets shorter and shorter. And he was burning himself out because no cared. Because he would not let them see.

“Sit with me?” he asked, still not looking away.

I moved across the room and sat at his feet. Leaning against the corner of the couch, I turned my gaze outside.

And so there we sat, both looking out the window, both with our thousand-yard stares.


End file.
